Who’s on the inside track for a Romney Cabinet

Mitt Romney said his Cabinet and White House staff will be stacked with men and women from the business world, but his top advisers sketched out for POLITICO a team composed of many familiar faces in Washington.

Already on the inside track: several veterans of George W. Bush’s administration and a number of women — but not necessarily a single Democrat.

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The choices are still months off — and behind in the polls, Romney is hardly preoccupied with his transition just yet — but it is possible to chart a more detailed early look at a potential Romney Cabinet than was possible for Bush or Barack Obama at this stage of their campaigns.

And one name advisers return to time and again is a person little-known to most Americans: Mike Leavitt, a fellow Mormon who is creating a government-in-waiting plan for Romney. Leavitt is the prototypical Romney Cabinet pick — loyal, low-key and diligent, just the kind of person Romney likes to surround himself with.

Leavitt did two jobs for Bush: ran the Environmental Protection Agency and the Health and Human Services Department and is a lock for one of the most important jobs if he wants it — White House chief of staff or Treasury secretary, the advisers said.

Glenn Hubbard, an economic adviser to the campaign, would be a likely Romney appointee as Federal Reserve chairman or Treasury secretary. He served as Bush’s top economic adviser for a time as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

And Dan Senor, a senior adviser to Paul Ryan, would likely get a top West Wing job, perhaps deputy chief of staff or even national security adviser. Senor was a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq immediately after the war. Kevin Madden, traveling spokesman on the campaign plane, would be expected to be named White House spokesman.

Rounding out the Bush veterans: Senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie, former counselor to Bush and former Republican National Committee chairman, is very well-positioned for a top counselor job given his bigger-than-most-realize role in whipping the current operation into shape, the advisers said.

In his last interview before heading to his lakefront New Hampshire home to prepare his acceptance speech for this week’s Republican National Convention, Romney sketched for POLITICO several of the criteria he will use in picking his Cabinet:

— The qualification that is uppermost in his mind is private-sector experience: “My focus is going to be on the economy, getting us strong again. So having people who have actually run things in the private sector or have been actively involved in the private sector will be of real interest to me.”

— Romney said he expects that his Cabinet will have “a representative form of diversity that mirrors our society at large,” including women, African-Americans and Hispanics. He mentioned Debra Lee, an African-American who runs Black Entertainment Television, as someone who has caught his eye.

— Interestingly, he would not commit to putting a Democrat in his Cabinet, although he noted that he had in Massachusetts. If he decided to include one, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell would be one possibility, perhaps as Transportation secretary.

— Romney also said he would empower his Cabinet more than Obama has. “I do not look to bring someone in to run an agency and say, ‘Hey, go do a good job, and let me know how it goes.’ I look, instead, to come in and say, ‘Here is what I want to have done. These are the things I believe need to be done in this agency, and I’m the guy that got elected, not you. So, it is my goals, not your goals, that are first and foremost.” To lure any CEOs into his Cabinet, Romney would need to make plain they would have more power than under Obama or Bush.

Romney boasted of how, as governor, he had more women in power than any other leader in the country. He said he asked women’s groups at the time to give him a list of women who should get jobs, and many did. Romney said Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard is the type of woman he would love to have work for him, but her spokesman told POLITICO she wouldn’t leave the company for government.

One woman certain for a top role, probably as a senior adviser, is Beth Myers, who helps run his campaign and ran his life as governor. “She made sure that every important issue followed a timetable … and that things were brought to me on a timely basis and that we had sufficient time to deal with them,” Romney said.

She would be the new Valerie Jarrett — trusted as the keeper of the legacy.

Fantasy politics? Now we have Romney picking a fantasy Cabinet. This is, as Shakespeare might say, much ado about nothing, but if he has fun, it seems harmless enough. Let him play his fantasy game; it's as close as he'll ever get to picking a real Cabinet.

If Romney gets in, we will have the sun; unfortunately it will be sundown rather than sunup. He's favoring the same people who gave us the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the people who gutted our economy. the people who gutted the EPA, and the same people who decided that the energy companies had no liability for environmental disasters. I may as well take the gas pipe if that know-nothing get in.

Kerry Healey, his former Lt Gov here in MA....foreign policy advisor. Now there's a real zero. Would love to know her expertise in this area. She totally disappeared from public view when she lost her race for Gov here after Mittens decided not to run...we are grateful for that. She's part of the rich, horsey set here in MA...maybe she could take are of Rafalca for Queen Ann,

Dan Senor a/k/a "Baghdad Bob" for Press Secretary? He was responsible for spinning false mission accomplished stories for the provisional US government in Baghdad. Romney needs someone to keep spinning the lies.

A cabinet whose main purpose is to run their departments rather than to get the president re-elected.

A cabinet filled with people who have the knowledge and qualifications to do their jobs.

A cabinet with the power to do their jobs rather than having to turn power over to unvetted, unknown, illegal "czars".

Gee - I've almost forgotten what that was like.

yeah and don't forget Obama's Mob-run Union Bosses..........like Andy Stern who was a regular in the beginning and helped Nancy Pelosi write ObamaCare in the back chambers of the House out of the view of C-SPAN.....

Wow. I remember Dan Senor's TV appearances from back in 2004 and 2005, where his job seemed to be to casually dismiss the latest reports of violence in Iraq, and argue that everything was going according to plan.

If that's the quality of cabinet member Romney is looking at, then America is truly screwed.

Romney, as the new leader of the Cayman Islands, will likely choose the very best Bank Presidents on the Islands to be part of his Cabinet. With these people, Romney will be able to create some the most secretive and desired tax shelters in the world.

This will be the next political target for the Dems and their propaganda machine.

They have spend 8 months attacking Romney as a stiff rich guy who is unconcerned about the middle class. They have spent a month attacking Ryan as a "destroyer of the elderly" and a cost-cutter who wants to do harm to those in need. Now they will begin to offer up caricatures of who Romney will put into his cabinet and try to frighten the citizenry again.

The Dem campaign rests on a two-pronged attack. The first part is "small ball" by targeting various demographic constituencies and promising them the world if he is reelected: women, gays, blacks, Hispanics, elderly, Jewish Americans, Muslims, ecology extremists, university professors, union members, etc. The "large ball" game is to try to paint the GOP as "extremist" intent on cheating the middle class out of their livelihood and retirement by focusing on "scary issues": medicare, social security, taxes, etc. The things Obama will avoid are the economy, jobs, deficits, debt, business, regulatory reform, gas prices, etc.

The attacks on the hypothetical Romney cabinet will be part of the "large ball" campaign thread.